London theatre reviews

It was presumably John le Carré’s death in 2020 that allowed a stage version of his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to finally go ahead. But I’d say his estate was right to give the nod: the story is in safe hands with playwright David Eldridge and director Jeremy Herrin, whose adaptation settles in at the West End after scoring good notices in Chichester.

‘Merry and tragical. Tedious and brief’ is how the play with a play staged at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is described. While nobody could accuse this co-production between the Globe and Headlong as being tedious, it otherwise feels like it could have otherwise been patterned off that contradictory description.

Are you looking for something fuzzy to warm your heart this Christmastime? Then boy does the National Theatre have the show for you. 

High priests of the theatrically random Told By An Idiot are a perfect match for Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s droll festive picturebook How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? Adapted and directed by company leader Paul Hunter, it’s a glorious 50-minute non sequitur that should appeal to anyone with a sense of nonsense.

Cementing the Lyric Hammersmith’s place at the top of the London panto pantheon, here’s a wonderfully inventive new take on Jack and the Beanstalk for 2025. 

Scrooge has been ditched for an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s ‘favourite child’, David Copperfield. And, in Abigail Pickard Price’s production, the reasons for this great honour shine loud and clear.

Expectations were always high for Ivo van Hove’s revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 breakthrough All My Sons, because Van Hove made his own UK breakthrough with his extraordinary 2014 production of Miller’s A View from the Bridge. And by Hove, he’s done it again.

Alfie (Clive Owen) is dying of cancer. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is not. A couple since their twenties, their lives are about to diverge dramatically, though precisely how dramatically is up for grabs. David Eldridge’s new play begins with a physically ailing Alfie telling Julie he wants to stop treatment, before proceeding to splurge all manner of wild thoughts, theories and plans about his imminent death. 

Rollercoasters and death may sound like a strange subject for a musical but Ride the Cyclone at Southwark Playhouse spins them into its own brand of jaunty strangeness.

I’m going to be honest and say that I was worried I’d not be able to take a drama about a porn addict entirely seriously. It’s an unusual subject!